Hitting The Jackpot - September 23, 2026

Ana Kasparian (0:13)

Welcome to TYT, I'm your host Ana Kasparian. There is a news story involving yet another ICE incident where an American citizen actually gets roughed up after telling the immigration agents that he is an American citizen over and over again. They left him battered after roughing him up, and I'm going to give you the details of that story hopefully later on in this segment.

It's going to be a bare bones segment because the story developed right before the show, and I want to make sure I cover it because this is, it keeps happening over and over again. And I think a lot of people kind of turned away after Greg Bovino was removed from his position in Customs and Border Patrol. But some of these tactics that led to the removal of Bovino are still being carried out, and this latest story happened in Illinois. So we'll get to that story a little later in the show. But for now, I wanted to start off with the update on the UN General Assembly taking place in New York City. And we did hear a speech from the Iranian president today. Let's get into it.

Masoud Pezeshkian (1:23)

Yesterday, the United States president described us as terrorists. We have been the victims of terrorism. Our esteemed supreme leader was assassinated without any legal framework of reason. I come from an Iran where in truth, they bombed a school. You see these children?

These children perished under bombs. With weapons used by the United States and Israel, they were innocent.

Ana Kasparian (2:09)

A day after President Trump delivered his speech at the UN General Assembly, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who actually had a completely different prepared speech, decided to abandon it and give you what you heard in that video. Now, he says he abandoned the speech that he previously had prepared following President Trump's declaration that the Iranians are terrorists who might get nuked if they fail to comply with Trump's demands, which by the way, is incredible because in the same speech, Trump says Iran cannot have nuclear weapons. It would be too dangerous as he's threatening to nuke Iran. And then on top of that, I mean, he talks about little babies that get killed.

What about the babies that you are responsible for slaughtering by aiding and abetting the Israelis? Anyway, let's watch the US delegation shamefully walk out as Pezeshkian describes the Iranian children who were killed in US and Israeli strikes. Take a look.

Masoud Pezeshkian (3:19)

Lamerd, one of the small cities in a province in Iran, a sports hall where children were busy playing.

The United States, by using weapons with multiple warheads, targeted at the sports hall. They martyred, assassinated our scientists, our men, women and children.

Innocent children whom in truth had committed no crimes, no sins. Those who are terrorists and train and protect terrorists, describe us as such. We have only defended ourselves. We are not terrorists. We responded, but we did not hit civilian populations. They came into surrounding territories by and targeted our universities, our health care centers, our schools, our hospitals, our infrastructures, all of it against international law.

Ana Kasparian (4:30)

He was right to point out the fact that while Iran targeted US military bases, military infrastructure, what did the United States target? Now some argue that, well, it was an accident based on outdated intel that the US carried out a triple tap strike against the Manab Elementary School in the opening salvo of this war against Iran. It was a mistake, it was a mistake. However, to me, it's becoming increasingly clear that it might not have been a mistake at all.

Now, I wasn't really familiar with how Tomahawk missiles work.

But it turns out that at every step of deploying a Tomahawk missile, there are individuals in the military who need to sign off on it, who need to approve it. Luckily, we have Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Aguilar, who made an interesting point about this during a recent episode of Mario Nafal's stream. Mario Nafal wasn't conducting the interview, this is Brandon Weikert. But nonetheless, take a listen to what Aguilar had to say.

Anthony Aguilar (5:36)

So in the joint prioritized targeting list, that target, the Menab School and the sports complex, there were already listed on that joint targeting list. It was like, okay, we're going, go, Tomahawks away. There was already designated targets.

So let's just say that there was an AI faux pas. Okay, well, the Western Coast, the Persian Gulf Coast of Iran, is one of the most surveilled, ubiquitously watched pieces of terrain on the planet.

We know that that was or wasn't a military base. And let's just say that the most latest of intel we had from 24 hours ago dictated that it was. Okay, well, a Tomahawk cruise missile is a terminally guided missile. Meaning, there is somebody flying that thing. There is an operator at a terminal watching that thing all the way from the minute it comes in. And a Tomahawk cruise missile also has loitering time around the target before it strikes to confirm or deny the presence of whatever you want to hit without wasting a multimillion dollar missile. So did every aspect of knowing that it wasn't this IRGC base, knowing that it wasn't all of these things. Not only in past Intel, it wasn't, but in the authorization of the strike. But then the actual, the terminal guidance, the person at the terminal can say, hey, cut, we're not hittin it. We're, pull out, pull off, up until a minute before it hits.